Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Funny that Page went on and on about avoiding releasing anything that had already been bootlegged. Um...looks like that's no longer the case.

Loads of albums aren't "canon", but still get a reissue treatment... but yeah, it would have made far more sense to put all of the relevant studio outtakes as bonus tracks on the appropriate albums.

Page seems like a dude that does not realize that after all this time, he is no longer the best authority on things Led Zeppelin. "Wait until you hear this show you've never heard before! It'll ... what? You've heard it? Hmm, OK, get a load of these incredible outtakes from ... how did you know I was going to say that? You have them already? All of them!? Hmm. OK, how about this incredible batch of unreleased songs? Haven't heard them yet, have you? Well, that's because they do not exist, you suckers! Now shut up and buy the records again."

The band were together for 12 years (and touring most of the time) and they ceased recording over 35 years ago. I don't know what the fuck people are expecting, to be honest, some mythical lost album to just magically appear out of nowhere? That's the problem with these fucking "classic" acts like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles etc. It's as if people won't be content until the barrel has been scraped so hard that there's a gaping hole in the bottom of it. "There must be more! There must be more!" ... At some point, there is no more.

what do you mean?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5p6z8QAVYU

"No more unreleased material in the archives, folks, but here's a vintage recording of John Lennon laying down a shit on his toilet at Tittenhurst Park circa 1971"

"*gasps* Oh my god, such genius! What a musical colon! BEST BAND EVAAAAAAA! MUSIC HAS NOT BEEN IMPROVED SINCE THE '70s!!!11!!"

Nothing I've read about 'Carnival of Light' suggests to me that it's anything more than The Beatles dicking around for a long time and that it's probably unreleased for a very good reason.

If they ever make the DVD of the Beatles singles videos, "Carnival of Light" should be the menu music. Anything else gives it undue prominence.

What are the odds on Page's next move being an 'Authorized Bootleg' series of live stuff?

Actually, LZ is pretty unusual for not having a bunch of interesting leftovers. Them and ... Pink Floyd? Bowie? But the Beatles archives stuff has often been illuminating. Likewise Dylan, Springsteen, the Beach Boys and a bunch others. Stones holding tight in terms of cool outtakes, but lots of other acts have done it. I'd buy an LZ set of just isolated Bonham beats.

Beatles have lots of unreleased rambling studio stuff because that's primarily how they worked in the later years. Without playing live the only way to get chops back was jamming it out in the studio.

Led Zeppelin were a touring act for their entirety. Plus two of the band members were studio pros, so yeah less prone to dicking around in studio.

I am in a constant state of amazement of how much unreleased junk has come out of the Beach Boys vaults over the years, the output is staggering

xp

Serious question: does anyone ever listen to outtakes for enjoyment in the same way as they would the main feature? Or is listening to that stuff just an intellectual exercise or to satisfy curiosity as to how certain bands worked together, the way they interacted with one another, the way they developed up the tracks that would eventually become the main feature, or a window into what the band considered to be "not good enough" to be properly released?

I only ask because I've got copies of The Beatles' Anthology discs, and I've heard the Get Back bootlegs and all of that kind of stuff, and while it's all very interesting for maybe one or two spins, you can see why a lot of it ended it up on the cutting room floor and wasn't deemed worthy for release. Some might say they're "historical documents", but don't the proper releases count as that and do it far more successfully? I must have felt the urge to listen to Abbey Road hundreds upon hundreds of times, but hardly ever have I thought "yeah, Anthology 3, that's my listening for the night sorted!"

I get the feeling that when it comes to certain "classic" artists, people won't be satisfied until every single last note of the archives is released in some way, which they'll probably listen to once or twice at the very most.

I listen to the beatles anthology stuff all the time, esp 2

I probably listen to the White Album demos more than most regular Beatles albums. I like to imagine it's their DIY K Records LP.

I listen to outtakes mainly for pleasure ( see Prince as Exhibit #1). The "Oh! I see what they changed there!" moments happen for me the first couple of plays. Afterwards I rarely think about that stuff.

I listen to outtakes, both as an exercise (hmm, where did this song come from?) and for pleasure, since there are often new things to hear/learn/enjoy. Prince, Springsteen ... so much cool stuff.

I get as much enjoyment out of Who, Miles, Coltrane, Hendrix, and some Beatles alternates/outtakes as I do from the master takes.

And speaking of the Who, few artists had an Odds & Sods in them, an outtakes compilation that stands up to (and in some cases betters) the regular output.

Honestly it depends upon the band and how they worked. For the Beach Boys, for instance, there's three CDs worth of the band recording backing tracks for "Good Vibrations". I can't listen to that and get aesthetic enjoyment out of it, though it's a fascinating document for understanding Brian's process in the studio. On the other side of things is stuff like "The Complete Funhouse Sessions", where the Stooges went in and laid down the songs live in the studio, complete with vocals, multiple times, and then just picked the ones they like best. Any one of those is really about as good as any other.

Those are both pretty extreme examples. But what it boils down to is that, at least in the primary era for bootlegging, studio outtakes would often wind up being unreleased for reasons other than artistic merit. The Beach Boys are, again, a prime example. They have a ton of completed songs that didn't make it out officially either because they were a thoroughly dysfunctional band (see: Dennis' songs for "Surf's Up"), or because the songs were profoundly out of touch with the commercial realities of the day (see: "My Solution").

Another example of the way process changes can affect the listenability of outtakes, even within the same band, is Talking Heads. I really enjoy listening to the outtakes from "Fear of Music", because Eno and Byrne tried a lot of different things with the songs. Fripp was originally brought in to play on three or four different songs on the record, but only wound up on the finished record on one song. There's a version of "Cities" that incorporates a loud "WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP" noise during parts of the song (referenced by Byrne on the live version from "The Name of This Band Is..."). They did a version of "Mind" with extreme treatments on the vocals. I wouldn't argue that any of these versions are, in artistic terms, _better_ than the finished product, but they're enjoyable to listen to on their own terms.

"Remain in Light", in contrast, I don't enjoy listening to the outtakes for at all. It seems to me that the recording process for that was less open-ended. After making "Fear of Music", Byrne and Eno were more sure of themselves and what they wanted to do. So while "Remain in Light" is a more experimental album, the recording process was, at least based on existing documentation, less experimental.

The tipping point for me is possibly Nebraska. Springsteen, a major artist, recorded acoustic demos of his songs for the band to play, and afterwards decided he liked the acoustic demos better and released them as the album. The success of the Basement Tapes probably made that possible, and honestly the Basement Tapes are, I think, still the best go-to argument for listening to outtakes (or songwriting demos) as songs, because the way they were recorded was completely out of touch with the way the market worked back then.

Well, maybe the Basement Tapes are even more anomalous. Because with scattered exceptions like "I Go to Sleep", rock musicians didn't do songwriting demos. The sixties were the apex of the songwriter-performer cult.

Anyway, I think having enjoyable, listenable unreleased outtakes is mostly an artifact of the way the industry worked, technologically and sociologically, during the rock era. Today the process of construction is less likely to produce aesthetically enjoyable rejects, and the standard for what is considered "releasable" is more inclusive.

Yeah, there are some "Nebraska"-era demos that are incredible, like the menacing "Pink Cadillac," a stark contrast to the radio version. Re: Talking Heads, "Remain in the Light" was constructed largely out of jams, even more so than the previous records, so I'm not sure there are real outtakes, per se. Just bits and pieces and fragments. Ever heard a band try to play "Once in a Lifetime" like the record? It's pretty much impossible, since it was constructed in the studio and the one keeps moving around.

This Remain In Light outtake is pretty great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DLhrB2U_co

I can hear bits and pieces of that creeping into "The Great Curve."

tbh I just put outtakes on my ipod with the rest of the artists' catalog, they just become part of the body of work. so what if the Bee Gees never released/finished "Completely Unoriginal", it's still one of my favorite songs of theirs and it's really funny

Serious question: does anyone ever listen to outtakes for enjoyment in the same way as they would the main feature? Or is listening to that stuff just an intellectual exercise or to satisfy curiosity as to how certain bands worked together, the way they interacted with one another, the way they developed up the tracks that would eventually become the main feature, or a window into what the band considered to be "not good enough" to be properly released?

I only ask because I've got copies of The Beatles' Anthology discs, and I've heard the Get Back bootlegs and all of that kind of stuff, and while it's all very interesting for maybe one or two spins, you can see why a lot of it ended it up on the cutting room floor and wasn't deemed worthy for release. Some might say they're "historical documents", but don't the proper releases count as that and do it far more successfully? I must have felt the urge to listen to Abbey Road hundreds upon hundreds of times, but hardly ever have I thought "yeah, Anthology 3, that's my listening for the night sorted!"

I get the feeling that when it comes to certain "classic" artists, people won't be satisfied until every single last note of the archives is released in some way, which they'll probably listen to once or twice at the very most.

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican), Wednesday, June 3, 2015 7:43 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Honestly if I had to choose between only listening to the Dylan bootleg series or the proper Dylan studio albums from now til the end of my life I would choose the Bootleg Series

and don't get me started on what's supposed to be on Neil Young Archives Vol II

but Dylan's weird contrariness is legendary, why he left "Blind Willie McTell" off of Infidels and kept "Union Sundown" or "Neighborhood Bully" god only knows

Yeah, I guess I would make a distinction between outtakes and alternate takes. Because if I'm being honest, the latter not so much. But demos and unreleased stuff from acts, sure.

“Two Ones Are Won”
“10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod)”

curious about these 2 presence outtakes and also i've been waiting for presence in general, i wonder how the remaster will affect its sort of compelling murkiness

“10 Ribs & All/Carrot Pod Pod (Pod)”

Is this a Pavement cover?

features Robert Plant doing a Mark E. Smith impression

Pretty sure that song was on the Pacific trim 7"

http://www.theonion.com/article/teen-who-just-discovered-led-zeppelin-starting-to--199

Honda of the Holy

John Paul Jones played "When The Levee Breaks" with Mike Mills and a bunch of other musos at a festival in Norway last night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bKcFqwmSw8

That was pretty good! jpj always seems like such a great dude.

I've always seen a lot of Zeppelin-REM parallels

also, Mccaughey's Maiden strap

My friend Josh (who is also the Fenway Park organist) is the keyboardist in that lineup; he's pretty over the moon about this.

oh—I know of Josh through The Best Show!

Yes! And he's played the Best Show theme a bunch of times at baseball games.

Is that Steve Wynn out front? Must have been a Baseball Project gig.

I also have a friend in this line-up! - Tim, second guitarist and backing vocalist.

Man, I love how Buck and Mills have pretty much worked non-stop on side-projects, super-groups and solo albums since REM broke up. They're having so much fun.

JPJ did the string arrangements on Automatic For The People, good to see they kept in touch!

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/12/stairway-to-heavens-opening-chords-may-have-been-stolen-judge-says

http://today.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sherlock-holmes-basil-rathbone.jpg

Bit late now that randy c is dead tbh. What was his attitude on the issue anyway?

It's Zep-revisiting season. Man, this shit is so juvenile. But that rhythm section.

Sometimes I think it's juvenile, then other times I think, you know, Lord of the Rings was less than 20 years old, the Beatles hadn't broken up yet, it was the summer of love ... they could do worse than vikings and hobbits and blues double entendres.

Separately, got an advance of the Peter Grant bio so we'll see what that's like.

Horrific no doubt re: Grant bio!

Does it go into the ‘73 theft in NYC?